The first witness examined was Jenny Purdie, servant to Mr. George Walkinshaw. She had previously been several years in the service of his father, and is the same who, as our readers will perhaps recollect, contrived so femininely to seduce half-a-crown from the pocket of the old man, when she brought him the news of the birth of his son’s twin daughters.

‘What is your opinion of Mr. Walter Walkinshaw?’ inquired Mr. Threeper.

‘’Deed, sir,’ said Jenny, ‘I hae but a sma’ opinion o’ him—he’s a daft man, and has been sae a’ his days.’

‘But what do you mean by a daft man?’

‘I thought every body kent what a daft man is,’ replied Jenny; ‘he’s just silly, and tavert, and heedless, and o’ an inclination to swattle in the dirt like a grumphie.’

‘Well, but do you mean to say,’ interrupted the advocate, ‘that, to your knowledge, he has been daft all his days?’

‘I never kent him ony better.’

‘But you have not known him all his days—therefore, how can you say he has been daft all his days?—He might have been wise enough when you did not know him.’

‘I dinna think it,’ said Jenny;—‘I dinna think it was ever in him to be wise—he’s no o’ a nature to be wise.’

‘What do you mean by a nature?—Explain yourself.’

‘I canna explain mysel ony better,’ was the answer; ‘only I ken that a cat’s no a dog, nor o’ a nature to be,—and so the Laird could ne’er be a man o’ sense.’

‘Very ingenious, indeed,’ said Mr. Threeper; ‘and I am sure the gentlemen of the jury must be satisfied that it is not possible to give a clearer—a more distinctive impression of the deficiency of Mr. Walkinshaw’s capacity, than has been given by this simple and innocent country girl.—But, Jenny, can you tell us of any instance of his daftness?’

‘I can tell you o’ naething but the sic-like about him.’

‘Cannot you remember any thing he said or did on any particular day?’

‘O aye, atweel I wat I can do that—on the vera day when I gaed hame, frae my service at the Grippy to Mr. George’s, the sheep were sheared, and Mr. Watty said they were made sae naked, it was a shame to see them, and took one o’ his mother’s flannen polonies, to mak a hap to Mall Loup-the-Dike, the auld ewe, for decency.’

Jenny was then cross-questioned by Mr. Queerie, the able and intelligent advocate employed for the defence by Mr. Keelevin; but her evidence was none shaken, nor did it appear that her master had in any way influenced her. Before she left the box, the Sheriff said jocularly,—

‘I’m sure, from your account, Jenny, that Mr. Walkinshaw’s no a man ye would like to marry?’

‘There’s no saying,’ replied Jenny,—‘the Kittlestonheugh’s a braw estate; and mony a better born than me has been blithe to put up wi’ houses and lan’s, though wit and worth were baith wanting.’

The first witness thus came off with considerable eclat, and indeed gained the love and affections, it is said, of one of the jurors, an old bien carle, a bonnet-laird, to whom she was, in the course of a short time after, married.

The next witness was Mr. Mordecai Saxheere, preses and founder of that renowned focus of sosherie the Yarn Club, which held its periodical libations of the vintage of the colonies in the buxom Widow Sheid’s tavern, in Sour-Milk John’s Land, a stately pile that still lifts its lofty head in the Trongate. He was an elderly, trim, smooth, Quaker-faced gentleman, dressed in drab, with spacious buckram-lined skirts, that came round on his knees, giving to the general outline of his figure the appearance of a cone supported on legs in white worsted hose. He wore a highly powdered horse-hair wig, with a long queue; buckles at the knees and in his shoes, presenting, in the collective attributes of his dress and appearance, a respect-bespeaking epitome of competency, good-eating, honesty, and self-conceit. He was one of several gentlemen whom the long-forecasting George had carried with him to Grippy on those occasions when he was desirous to provide witnesses, to be available when the era should arrive that had now come to pass.

‘Well, Mr. Saxheere,’ said the Edinburgh advocate, ‘what have you to say with respect to the state of Mr. Walter Walkinshaw?’

‘Sir,’ replied the preses of the Yarn Club, giving that sort of congratulatory smack with which he was in the practice of swallowing and sending round the dram that crowned the substantials, and was herald to what were called the liquidities of the club,—‘Sir,’ said Mordecai Saxheere, ‘I have been in no terms of intromission with Mr. Walkinshaw of Grippy, ’cept and except in the way of visitation; and on those occasions I always found him of a demeanour more sportive to others than congenial.’

‘You are a merchant, I believe, Mr. Saxheere,’ said Mr. Threeper; ‘you have your shop in the High Street, near the Cross. On the market day you keep a bottle of whisky and a glass on the counter, from which, as I understand, you are in the practice of giving your customers a dram—first preeing or smelling the liquor yourself, and then handing it to them.—Now, I would ask you, if Mr. Walkinshaw were to come to your shop on the market day, would you deal with him?—would you, on your oath, smell the glass, and then hand it across the counter, to be by him drunk off?’

The advocate intended this as a display of his intimate knowledge of the local habits and usages of Glasgow, though himself but an Edinburgh man,—in order to amaze the natives by his cleverness.

‘Sir,’ replied Mr. Saxheere, again repeating his habitual congratulatory smack, ‘much would rely on the purpose for which he came to custom. If he offered me yarn for sale, there could be no opponency on my side to give him the fair price of the day; but, if he wanted to buy, I might undergo some constipation of thought before compliance.’

‘The doubtful credit of any wiser person might produce the same astringency,’ said the advocate, slyly.

‘No doubt it would,’ replied the preses of the Yarn Club; ‘but the predicament of the Laird of Grippy would na be under that denominator, but because I would have a suspection of him in the way of judgement and sensibility.’

‘Then he is not a man that you would think it safe to trade with as a customer?’ said the Sheriff, desirous of putting an end to his prosing.

‘Just so, sir,’ replied Mordecai; ‘for, though it might be safe in the way of advantage, I could not think myself, in the way of character, free from an imputation, were I to intromit with him.’

It was not deemed expedient to cross-question this witness; and another was called, a celebrated Professor of Mathematics in the University, the founder and preses of a club, called the ‘Anderson Summer Saturday’s.’ The scientific attainments and abstract genius of this distinguished person were undisputed; but his simplicity of character and absence of mind were no less remarkable. The object that George probably had in view in taking him, as an occasional visitor, to see his brother, was, perhaps, to qualify the Professor to bear testimony to the arithmetical incapacity of Walter; and certainly the Professor had always found him sufficiently incapable to have warranted him to give the most decisive evidence on that head; but a circumstance had occurred at the last visit, which came out in the course of the investigation, by which it would appear the opinion of the learned mathematician was greatly shaken.

‘I am informed, Professor, that you are acquainted with Mr. Walter Walkinshaw. Will you have the goodness to tell the Court what is your opinion of that gentleman?’ said the advocate.

‘My opinion is, that he is a very extraordinary man; for he put a question to me when I last saw him, which I have not yet been able to answer.’

The advocate thought the Professor said this in irony,—and inquired, with a simper,—

‘And, pray, what might that question be?’

‘I was trying if he could calculate the aliquot parts of a pound; and he said to me, could I tell him the reason that there were but four and twenty bawbees in a shilling?’

‘You may retire,’ said the advocate, disconcerted; and the Professor immediately withdrew; for still the counsel in behalf of Walter declined to cross-question.

‘The next witness that I shall produce,’ resumed Mr. Threeper, ‘is one whom I call with extreme reluctance. Every man must sympathize with the feelings of a mother on such an occasion as this,—and will easily comprehend, that, in the questions which my duty obliges me to put to Mrs. Walkinshaw, I am, as it were, obliged, out of that sacred respect which is due to her maternal sensibility, to address myself in more general terms than I should otherwise do.’

The Leddy was then called,—and the advocate, with a solemn voice and pauses of lengthened sadness and commiseration, said,—

‘Madam, the Court and the jury do not expect you to enter into any particular description of the state of your unfortunate son. They only desire to know if you think he is capable of conducting his affairs like other men.’

‘Him capable!’ exclaimed the Leddy. ‘He’s no o’ a capacity to be advised.’

She would have proceeded further,—but Mr. Threeper interposed, saying, ‘Madam, we shall not distress you further; the Court and the jury must be satisfied.’

Not so was Mr. Keelevin, who nodded to Mr. Queerie, the counsel for Walter; and he immediately rose.

‘I wish,’ said he, ‘just to put one question to the witness. How long is it since your son has been so incapable of acting for himself?’

‘I canna gie you day nor date,’ replied the Leddy; ‘but he has been in a state of condumacity ever since his dochter died.’

‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Queerie; ‘then he was not always incapable?’

‘O no,’ cried the Leddy; ‘he was a most tractable creature, and the kindliest son,’ she added, with a sigh; ‘but since that time he’s been neither to bind nor to haud, threatening to send me, his mother, a-garsing—garing me lay out my own lawful jointure on the house, and using me in the most horridable manner—wastring his income in the most thoughtless way.’

Mr. Threeper began to whisper to our friend Gabriel, and occasionally to look, with an afflicted glance, towards the Leddy.

Mr. Queerie resumed,—

‘Your situation, I perceive, has been for some time very unhappy—but, I suppose, were Mr. Walkinshaw to make you a reasonable compensation for the trouble you take in managing his house, you would have no objections still to continue with him.’

‘Oh! to be surely,’ said the Leddy;—‘only it would need to be something worth while; and my gude-dochter and her family would require to be obligated to gang hame.’

‘Certainly, what you say, Madam, is very reasonable,’ rejoined Mr. Queerie;—‘and I have no doubt that the Court perceives that a great part of your distress, from the idiotry of your son, arises from his having brought in the lady alluded to and her family.’

‘It has come a’ frae that,’ replied the witness, unconscious of the force of what she was saying;—‘for, ’cepting his unnaturality to me about them, his idiocety is very harmless.’

‘Perhaps not worse than formerly?’

A look from George at this crisis put her on her guard; and she instantly replied, as if eager to redeem the effects of what she had just said,—

‘’Deed, Sir, it’s no right to let him continue in the rule and power o’ the property; for nobody can tell what he may commit.’

At this juncture, Mr. Queerie, perceiving her wariness, sat down; and the Reverend Dr. Denholm being called by Mr. Threeper, stated, in answer to the usual question,—

‘I acknowledge, that I do not think Mr. Walkinshaw entirely of a sound mind; but he has glaiks and gleams o’ sense about him, that mak me very dootful if I could judicially swear, that he canna deport himsel wi’ sufficient sagacity.’

‘But,’ said the advocate, ‘did not you yourself advise Mr. George Walkinshaw to institute these proceedings.’

‘I’ll no disown that,’ replied the Doctor; ‘but Mr. Walter has since then done such a humane and a Christian duty to his brother’s widow, and her two defenceless and portionless bairns, that I canna, in my conscience, think now so lightly of him as I once did.’

Here the jury consulted together; and, after a short conference, the foreman inquired if Mr. Walkinshaw was in Court. On being answered in the negative, the Sheriff suggested an adjournment till next day, that he might be brought forward.